There's enough shouting, map questing, and his- torical-landmark scaling to fill an amusement ride, which may be the point. The film takes American history, puts it in a blender, and serves it like pab- lum to conspiracy theorists.-Bruce Diones (In wide release.) THE ORPHANAGE A skillful and destabilizing début from the young Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona, in collab- oration with the screenwriter Sergio G. Sánchez and the producer Guillermo del Toro (whose own films, notably "The Devil's Backbone," are a loom- ing influence here). A happy couple, Laura (Belén Rueda) and Carlos (Fernando Cayo), buy the old orphanage where Laura herself was raised, and plan to reopen it as a home for disabled children. They have a son of their own, who appears to befriend the long-gone inhabitants of the place, as if communing with ghosts. When he disappears, a professional medium (Geraldine Chaplin) is brought in to help with the search; the staging of her séance, under green night-vision light, is de- signed to stretch and snap the nerves of the har- diest viewer. The movie, however, is more than the sum of its shocks, ripening into a detailed study of childhood anxiety and the extremes of maternal love. In Spanish.-A.L. (1/14/08) (In wide release. ) as Marjane leaves her own childhood behind. In the French version, the voice of her grandmother was supplied by Danielle Darrieux; u.S. audiences hear that of Gena Rowlands. A fair trade.-A.L. (12/24 & 31/07) (In wide release.) PILGRIMAGE Under John Ford's direction, this melodrama about warped mother love, from 1933, becomes a powerful fable of political progress. The story begins during the First World War in rural Ar- kansas, where Jim (Norman Foster), the only child of the widow Hannah Jessop (Henrietta Crosman), wants to marry the daughter of the local drunkard. In the hope of breaking up the romance, the fiercely righteous Hannah signs a waiver allowing him to be drafted. Soon there- after, Jim is killed in action, and the flinty woman grows even more proud, imperious, and avari- cious. Ten years later, Army officials invite her to join a delegation of Gold Star Mothers trav- elling to France to visit their sons' graves, and the trip provides her with a surprising chance at personal redemption. Ford's sharp visual met- aphors highlight the ambience of federal au- thority even in the deepest backcountry and lend a grand historical dimension to Hannah's great moral reckoning. As she strikes out on her own in France and, through strange new expe- TABLES FOR. TWO - - .',4 0 1'111'llil_ --- . Ii TOLOACHE , , . " :.' . , ) C ) 251 W. 50th St. (212-581-1818)-The first thing to know about this ambitious theatre-district Mex- ican bistro is that its name signifies, as a waiter will eagerly explain, "a flowering plant famed in Mexico for its use in love potions."("Loco weed" to American cowboys, it is a peyote-like hallucinogenic.) The second thing is that no- where on Toloache's menu is the potent blos- som employed. That's the sensible (and proba- bly the only legal) option. But the subtle tease points to a larger question: for whom, precisely, does Toloache aim? A green-and-purple neon sign, a neon-caked bar offering a bajillion te- quilas, and a gaudy triptych of, one supposes, the goddess of toloache, beckons spendthrift tourists, but the leather banquettes, white table- cloths, and an impressive, inventive menu seem to speak to well-heeled Upper East Siders. One can hardly blame the chef, Julian Me- dina, for his restaurant's identity crisis. A native of Mexico City, Medina aspires to take Mexican cuisine, once and for all, out of the dank beans- cheese-and-sour-cream cellar. (No free chips and salsa here.) The menu, then, is a kickshaw- crammed affair. A yellowfin ceviche with chunks of watermelon tastes like a spongy Jolly Rancher. Both a braised-beef-tongue taco and a taco filled with foie gras, mango, and refried beans are dis- comfitingly kooky. Simple, more refined items, though, like the roasted-tomato salsa and the frutas guacamole, made with quince and flecked with pomegranate seeds, are sumptuously buoy- ant and piquant. A black-truffle quesadilla, with huitlacoche salsa, is near perfect. The entrées are reliable, though many are smothered in sauces that nearly negate the meat beneath. Medina's kitchen may serve up heaps of dar- ing, but his staff, it seems, is firmly grounded in authenticity. In front of a rear brick oven used to make, among other dishes, queso fun- dido and huevo ranchero, two prep cooks peel and pit avocados with alarming prowess. And those accents are genuine. Inquire about a grass- hopper taco and hear, "I was born in Oaxaca. We used to catch them in our backyard by the handfuls. They are delicious!" Curious, lifelike, not delicious. (Open daily for lunch and dinner. Entrées $18-$26.) -Mike Peed PERSEPOLIS A striking new animated production, made in France but rooted in Iran. Its origins lie in two graphic novels by Marjane Satrapi, who has co-directed the movie version with Vincent Paronnaud. She is plainly the source for her heroine, also named Mar- jane, who is born in Tehran during the Shah's re- gime and grows up to witness the revolution of 1979; the mood, at first exultant, is soon darkened by a new sense of repression and threat. Marjane is an instinctive foe of the system, though her idea of rebellion is to listen to Iron Maiden in her bed- room, and a period spent as a student in Vienna ends in frustration and woe. Most of the film is in black -and-white, with sharply clipped and unshaded images; there is no denying their clarity and wit, yet the childish simplicity-like the general inex- pressiveness of the faces-eventually pales, not least 20 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 21, 2008 riences, has a crucial change of heart, Ford makes plain that the political is deeply, deci- sively personal: in this New Deal tearjerker, the liberal parents of the baby-boom era are lurk- ing on the horizon.-Richard Brody (Moving Image; Jan. 19.) SWEENEY TODD In many ways, Tim Burton should be the ideal director to bring Stephen Sondheim's triumphant musical to the screen. The maker of "Edward Scissorhands" and "Sleepy Hollow" has repeat- edly shown that he has a stomach for the bi- zarre and a sweet tooth for blood-or, at any rate, for displays of bright red. His regular muse, Johnny Depp, with his air of adventur- ous freakiness, seems equally primed for the part of Sweeney-the London barber who slashes the throats of customers and grinds the bodies up to fill the pies of Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bon- ham Carter) down below. All the more surpris- ing, then, that the result of their collaboration should too often feel thin and cramped. Even with an arsenal of razors at hand, Sweeney comes across as more of a misfit than a mur- derer, and the romantic subplot, about a pair of star-crossed lovers (Jamie Campbell Bower and Jayne Wisener), verges on the twee. The best performances come from Alan Rickman, as the vulpine Judge Turpin (who alone brings a sexual frisson to the film), and Ed Sanders, both vital and solemn, as Mrs. Lovett's assis- tant. The songs are delivered lustily, although audiences may not be ready for what is, in ef- fect, a murky comic opera.-A.L. (12/24 & 31/07) (In wide release.) TEETH Mitchell Lichtenstein, in his feature-film début, taps into the primal male fear of emasculation with a biting indie horror comedy based on the vagina- dentata myth. Innocent Dawn (the prodigiously coy Jess Weixler) is a star speaker at her local Chris- tian "Promise" meetings, where she preaches to ad- olescents the importance of chastity. Although her mother is sick and her hateful brother, Brad (the utterly creepy John Hensley), terrorizes her with lewd taunting, Dawn remains cheerful, and when she falls for the adorable Tobey (Hale Appleman), her journey toward self-discovery begins-to her hor- ror and to the detriment of many men, including, hilariously, a borderline-lecherous gynecologist. While Lichtenstein does not shy from gory blood- letting, he maintains an even tone of parody, offer- ing a fearsome nightmare for men and a droll, ca- thartic revenge scenario for women.-Shauna Lyon (Village East Cinemas.) THERE WILL BE BLOOD This enthralling and powerfully eccentric Amer- ican epic, written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (adapting Upton Sinclair's garrulous 1927 novel, "Oi!!"), covers a thirty-year span in the life of Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), who begins as a lonely silver miner in 1898 and winds up as one of the richest, and craziest, ty- coons in early-twentieth-century California. Much of the first part of the movie is given over to raptly silent passages of physical effort-men lifting, hauling, pounding, wordlessly working in the muck and viscous slime. The film is about the driving force of capitalism as it both creates and destroys the future, and its tone is at once exhilarated and sickened. Day-Lewis lowers his chin slightly, and his dark eyes dance with mer- riment as he speaks in full, coarse, and rounded tones. It is the voice of dominating commercial logic, an American force of nature. Plain view's great antagonist is a young man, Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), who thinks he has the word of God within him, and who creates, in the oil fields, the revivalist Church of the Third Reve- lation. Anderson has set up a kind of allegory of development, in which the two overwhelm- ing forces--entrepreneurial capitalism and evan- gelism-build Southern California together and then, inevitably, fall into combat. Their final con- frontation goes as far over the top as one of Plain view's gushing wells.-D.D. (12/17/07) (In wide release.) 27 DRESSES The mild, dorky charm of Katherine Heigl is not enough to energize this formulaic romantic comedy, written by Aline Brosh McKenna ("The Devil Wears Prada") and directed by Anne Fletcher. Jane (Heigl) is the single, ultra-orga- nized assistant of George (Ed Burns), the self- made director of a vaguely eco-friendly com- pany. When Jane's gorgeous party-girl sister, Tess (Malin Akerman), comes to town and steals George's heart, Jane is left fending off the ad- vances of an annoying wedding journalist, Kevin (James Marsden), who is secretly writing an ex- ð posé about her (she's been a bridesmaid twenty- six times!). Though Judy Greer, as Jane's friend, 0 lends some much-needed quirky humor, the sweet, universal premise-that Jane deeply believes in true love-leaves no room for surprises.-S.L. (In wide release.) ;:%